Sensational evidence that the Black Legion, hooded terrorist society, once plotted to kill many Detroit Jews by use of typhoid germs in milk and cottage cheese was disclosed here today by Prosecutor Duncan C. McRea.
Mr. McRea declared that his investigators obtained a statement from William Guthrie, Black Legion printer, involving a high legion official and a man described as a “chemist and bacteriologist.”
Guthrie is quoted as stating the plot failed because he threatened to notify the police. He said he refused to permit the plotters to breed germs in the basement of his home and warned them the idea might prove to be a “Frankenstein”, wiping out the entire city.
According to Mr. McRea, Guthrie said the plan was to breed the germs and put them into deliveries of milk and cottage cheese destined for Jewish homes. He said the men talked of sending the contaminated milk and cheese into the district “most thickly populated with their enemies, the Jews.”
The Black Legion is a terrorist society that originated in Michigan and is believed to have spread to other states. Its avowed aims are anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, anti-Catholic and anti-Negro. Several of its members are on trial here on charges of murder. So far as is known, none of the society’s victims was a Jew.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
